Redefining the role of the media agency

Main menu

Tag Archives: Media Meshing

Carat recently partnered with IAB and Amarach research to try to gain a greater understanding into the habits of TV viewers while they’re watching TV. As we all suspected, TV viewers are spending rather a lot of time online while simultaneously watching TV, so our research was designed to quantify the extent to which this was happening and to dig a bit deeper into what’s now known as “media meshing” or “second screening”

The research showed that an impressive 78% of TV viewers go online while watching TV. Even more interesting were our findings into what they’re doing online while watching TV. While the majority (53%) are social networking, 40% are doing their banking and 34% are on Google looking for information or just surfing in general. In fact, social networking has been frequently credited with encouraging a revival of certain TV programmes, as viewers simultaneously engage with programmes via Twitter and Facebook, notice the number of programmes currently running with hashtags promoted on screen.

Interestingly for advertisers, 1 in 5 who are online while watching TV are actively searching for brands or information on brands they have seen on TV, making it important for advertisers to upweight search budgets around TV advertising. In addition, a high proportion of those surveyed are also searching online for the TV commercials they’ve seen or the music within these commercials. YouTube is the first place they go to try to find commercials, making YouTube an increasingly important channel as a support for TV.

This clearly showed that the effectiveness of TV campaigns can be amplified through complimentary online activity. Canny advertisers should be looking at other ways to drive interactions now, including but not limited to; treating youtube as a search engine, much like Google, to help distribute the message, and looking for improved methods of engagement like Shazam, if the music is catchy, or perhaps incorporating a twitter presence into sponsorship. To name just a few.

This research was published in conjunction with IAB Ireland and the full presentation is available here, or you can get in touch with us here at Carat to receive a copy of the full report.